LeRoy Apker Award (2020): The strange, but not-so-bad, metallic state of the electron-doped cuprates*

The nature of the metallic state of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors remains one of the most pressing open problems in condensed matter physics. In this talk, we will discuss the transport phenomenology of electron-doped cuprates, which proves to be much richer than the mere existence of the linear-in-temperature resistivity for which hole-doped cuprates are notorious. Beyond exhibiting this hallmark of “strange metallicity” at low temperatures, electron-doped cuprates display a number of anomalous transport behaviors throughout the temperature, doping, and magnetic field phase diagram [1,2,3]. In addition to outlining this phenomenology, we present the recent observation [4] of resistivity saturation near the putative Mott-Ioffe-Regel limit in an electron-doped cuprate. We discuss the implications of this result with respect to postulated “bad metallic” or incoherent metallic transport, and its potential relationship to the physics of hole-doped cuprates and other strongly correlated materials.

1. R.L. Greene, et al., Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys. 11, 213 (2020)
2. T. Sarkar, et al., Sci. Adv. 5 eaav6753 (2019)
3. N.R. Poniatowski, et al., arXiv:1912.00974 (2020)
4. N.R. Poniatowski, et al., arXiv:2007.03685 (2020)